If I think back to how my family spends Father’s Day, or any holiday really, I have very vivid memories. My mom has decorations for just about every holiday and a family gathering is always necessary. Usually for Father’s Day, my dad likes us to wake up on Sundays, head to my grandparents for breakfast, get ready for church and head there together. After church, we go out to lunch and then usually play tennis or go on a walk together. This year, since I am in Richmond, my parents came up Saturday to spend the day in Church Hill, take a tour of the area, and treat me to dinner.
However, Father’s Day in Church Hill does not exactly resemble the same activities that I was used to on this holiday. While we did have a cookout after church with some visiting family of friends in the neighborhood and with the CHAT kids, there was not much talk of Father’s Day at all. In fact, during the church service, on CHAT participant named Tamia started to cry. As tears ran down her cheek, she explained to me that she had never spent Father’s Day with her dad. Tamia is not unusual with her situation. Out of the 40 + children that come to CHAT activities, there are only two that have two parent homes, one of those dads being a step-father. So here, Father’s Day is a bitter remembrance of something that they don’t have to celebrate. Tamia is young and still processing her emotions regarding her father, which I found to be a normal reaction to the constant reminder of an absent father figure. There is a difference for some of the older children though. Their reaction to the lack of their father’s presence did not seem sad or even bitter at all. Their speech was very matter of fact. Clarissa bluntly told me when asked her father lived here bluntly responded, “No, he was shot in the head when I was eleven.” That was that. “Do you miss him?” I asked. “No,” was her response as if I asked her if she wanted ketchup on her hot dog.
And while it is sad that most of the families here in Church Hill do not celebrate Father’s Day in a way that increases the Hallmark sales, this creates a powerful chance to help each of the children understand and important aspect of the character of God. During Sunday school, we tried to teach on the father heart of God. Reading various scriptures opened up the door for each child to see how God wants to be their father. He is the father that created them for a purpose, predestined their important life, and wants to lavish them with love. The Psalm 68:5 tell us that God is “a father to the fatherless, a defender of widows” and the book of Isaiah makes it clear that the Lord is our Father that “we are the clay and [he] is the potter; we are the all the work of [his] hand.” Even more, Paul’s letter to the Ephesians explains that God “in love predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will- to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”
It would never be my prayer that a child is without a father to love and care for them on this earth. Unfortunately this is the reality that many of the kids live with everyday, I think, without an understanding of what is missing in their life. However, that absence of love and adoration from a father figure can lead to potentially harmful behavior in adolescence and all throughout life. However, if we can help each child understand how God can be their father and completely love and care for them, I think God will be pleased.
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